Given the choice I'd blame Greenspan first. This whole idea of supressing the business cycle was his, and Clinton took the credit. GWB didn't want to rock the boat, but 9-11 happened and changed the world.

No, this was a conscious decision by the Bush administration. I don't know when we last had an administration that favored this approach.

A weak dollar boosts our economy by making our goods cheaper. We are sort of like China in this regard now. The middle class in most European countries, many Asian, and even some other countries are now richer than us when you translate their incomes into American dollars, so they come here and vacation and they buy American goods.

The danger is that this could cause inflation (as foreign goods, like oil, get more expensive). It could also destabilize the world economy as other countries start to find they are unable to compete price-wise with the US and China. To maintain their high standards of living they may be forced to leave the WTO. Under Republican administrations, I think our standard of living declines. Under Bush we've seen inflation and wage stagnation; under Reagan we saw more and more households becoming ones where both parents work. I think they call if family values.

No, this was a conscious decision by the Bush administration. I don't know when we last had an administration that favored this approach.

A weak dollar boosts our economy by making our goods cheaper. We are sort of like China in this regard now. The middle class in most European countries, many Asian, and even some other countries are now richer than us when you translate their incomes into American dollars, so they come here and vacation and they buy American goods.

The danger is that this could cause inflation (as foreign goods, like oil, get more expensive). It could also destabilize the world economy as other countries start to find they are unable to compete price-wise with the US and China. To maintain their high standards of living they may be forced to leave the WTO. Under Republican administrations, I think our standard of living declines. Under Bush we've seen inflation and wage stagnation; under Reagan we saw more and more households becoming ones where both parents work. I think they call if family values.

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So it doesn't matter to you at all that Bill Clinton and Greenspan were the first to try to pervert the normal business cycle to keep the economy in a permanent state of growth with no corrections, huh? It's always Bush's fault, no matter what happens. Take a look at the historicals in wes' cute little chart, btw.

Wes' futures trading chart in the first post. The line is under 120 at the highest and just below 80 on the other side.

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Like you said elsewhere, it's misleading as the dollar went up quite a bit just before that. It was around 98 only a year earlier. So not only is wes just wrong with his math, he's also very misleading.

So it doesn't matter to you at all that Bill Clinton and Greenspan were the first to try to pervert the normal business cycle to keep the economy in a permanent state of growth with no corrections, huh? It's always Bush's fault, no matter what happens. Take a look at the historicals in wes' cute little chart, btw.

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I'm objecting to the weak dollar approach. Clinton did the capitalist thing and expand markets and expand into new markets. (He gets a lot of criticism for things like NAFTA in that regard.) The dollar stayed strong, but American companies were able to compete by investing and manufacturing elsewhere. It worked well, except for those in manufacturing. It also created an enormous amount of international political clout for the US, which was very apparent when Clinton was president. Clinton gave us growth without inflation. Sustained growth is very good thing. It's amusing that you have a problem with it. It sounds like you wanted a recession during the Clinton years as a matter of economic prudence.